


Burn

by cruelmagic



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 20:13:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1578029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruelmagic/pseuds/cruelmagic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He has to learn how to let her go, but it hurts, hurts so much he can barely breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn

**Author's Note:**

> Mal makes sense in this one. Reinterpretation, probably.  
> For Anna, as always.

None of them tastes like her, so he drinks before he kisses them to numb his mind and senses; he fights, fists smashing his body, hoping that blood will cover his mouth and tongue, but in the morning bruises and pain remind him that he’s human—just human, only human, not enough, never enough. Not even a Grisha, his only real power being tracking, such a mundane skill full of dirt and smells, claws and teeth—nothing is more human than killing. (The Darkling would disagree but he doesn’t care about the tracker, other than regarding him a nuisance).

He wishes she’d loved him and he doesn’t know that she did once, she loved him so much that she gave up her power and locked it away, and it almost killed her. He doesn’t know that, but he does know that he’s lost his chance, and she’s slipping away, she’s outgrowing him, and leaving him behind.

He has to learn how to let her go, but it hurts, hurts so much he can barely breathe.

He dreams about dying in her arms, of burning, his skin cracking, pain overwhelming him—he dreams about the sun setting him aflame, and he both longs and fears for this dream. He doesn’t talk about it, for his death from her hands belongs to him and him alone.

“Alina,” he says, the name of a girl from the orphanage, plain girl, who played house with him: he would provide rabbits and she would cook them, poorly. A good life, a simple life—they’d have a boy and a girl, and they’d be happy. They’d make a family (something he never had). And they’d love each other, quietly, but there was the war and there was no escaping it, and their country needed them—their country needed her.

“Sankta Alina,” he says, and those two words shatter his world and steal his breath. A Grisha, the Grisha, the Sun Summoner, the Saviour.

If he stays, he’ll burn in her light even if she doesn’t mean for it to happen, so he learns to let her go, he learns to hate her and if he can’t hate her, maybe it’ll be easier when she hates him. He lets her see the bruises, when he notices her in the room, he holds Zoya tightly and kisses her and kisses and swallows the blood, so painfully aware that she’s not her, she can never be her. Please, hate me, he thinks, so I don’t have to hate you.

He has dreams about those weeks when it was only them, no war, no Darkling, no Grisha. How he wishes to go back and stay in those moments forever.

When he’s looking at Nikolai, he becomes angry, furious, jealous, and he despises himself for these feelings (he doesn’t want to feel, he needs more alcohol and actual, physical, pain), yet he can’t forget even for a moment, a fragment of a second that even though Nikolai is human, he is, he will be, powerful. The prince is not afraid of her, is not afraid to touch her, his flesh doesn’t fracture when she’s near.

“It hurts to be with you,” he confesses in his dream, only in his dreams truthful and unafraid, and he burns, flames consume him, and she stands there, the sun incarnated. “How do I stay away?”

He’s ash, yet his pulverized bones still ache.

“I love you,” he says in his dreams, and cries for he cannot leave her side even if it kills him.


End file.
